by John Farris
The feathered goddess, another of the wonders in this whirligig of the unearthly, had a blemish on her forehead, puckered like the navel of an orange. Her long blond hair flowed in flight between the great spread of wings. She gripped the sniper by his shoulders, sucked out his eyes, then flung him to the rocks at the edge of the sea and turned toward the house, soaring with a cry of transcendence past Bravo helicopter. The sky was low and brawling, suffused with lightning.
Chauncey's father, doomsday in his eyes and hands outflung as carnage stained the ground around him, cried out, "Condemned are the intruders and despoilers of our peaceful community!"
A fusillade of tracers from the .50 millimeter cannon aboard Bravo lit Wick McLain up, but he absorbed twenty rounds and stayed on his feet. He raised his hands again. A dust devil swirled in front of him, turned dark and grew with tornadic force. Bolts of electricity illuminated the faces of terrified men in Bravo.
Alpha helicopter began to lift off but was pulled back to the ground by gleeful youths with the strength and appearance of yearling grizzlies.
"Cut me loose!" Geoff McTyer pleaded with his father as the giant chopper strained and trembled, the rotors a smoky blur while the pilot tried to get them airborne.
The largest of the were-bears leaped straight up, almost ten feet from the ground, and into the helicopter through the doorway. It landed light on its toes and looked around with an intimidating roar, lunged and removed the pilot's helmeted head with a single blow, sending it like a cannonball through the wind screen. The helo dropped straight down. Geoff's face smashed into the pilot's seat. Two front teeth snapped in half. The were-bear turned to Geoff, who was crouched behind the pilot's seat with blood on his mouth. Scintillant fur stood out in a ruff, around the bear's head. It drew back a paw for another swipe. Geoff closed his eyes, dropping his head wearily. What a hell of a day.
But the decapitating blow he expected didn't come.
"Yo. What's this?"
Geoff looked up again.
"What? Did you—?"
The were-bear said in a teenager's voice, breaking at every third or fourth word, "Why are you handcuffed to the seat? You one of them or not? What's your name?"
"Geoff. I'm ... no. I used to be. FBI, I mean. None of this is my fault! I didn't want them to come. I told them not to. What in God's name are you?"
"His name? God's forgotten about us," the bear said, voice slipping again, falsetto to basso. It reached down, grasped the cuff that held Geoff to the seat, and broke it open with an easy twist.
"Where's Eden?" Geoff asked, his own voice shrill.
The were-bear looked cautiously down its long nose at him.
Behind them Robert Hyde came off the deck where he had been lying stunned since the helo's hard landing and shot the beast five times in the face and head. It fell backward out of the chopper. Hyde lunged after it and slammed the door shut.
There was a stunning flash in the sky as Bravo helicopter was destroyed by a bolt from the twister. Father and son flinched as their copter was buffeted by the shock wave and bombarded with debris. Glass that could not be armored because of weight considerations was chipped and spider-webbed.
"CAN YOU FLY THIS?" Hyde demanded.
"I don't know! I've only logged ten hours in our police helicopter! This thing is like the space shuttle!"
"Fly it, or we'll die here! Get us off the deck!"
Geoff unsnapped the harness of the headless pilot and wrestled the body out of the left-hand seat.
"Blood," he moaned. "So much blood!"
"Don't quit on me AGAIN!"
"Shut up, God damn you! My hands. Slippery." The odor of gore all over the seat turned him away, gagging.
"GO!"
His father was pointing the Glock at him, as if the threat had any substance. Geoff made no move to assume the controls. "Not without Eden!"
"We'll figure that out later. Do what I tell you!"
"You son of a bitch," Geoff said, and with his left hand raising the collective he sent the madly vibrating, smoky helicopter flapping out over blue water like another panicked gull, leaving storm and slaughter and the noli me tangere of Moby Bay behind.
"Eden, get up! Come on, snap out of it, we're getting you out of here!" Eden lifted clouded, eyes. She was crouched in a darkened corner of Chauncey's bedroom. Her mouth fumbled with the effort of producing speech.
"Who ...'re you?"
"I'm Bertie. The big guy in the doorway is Tom." Subvocally she added, We're friends. You can trust us. But Eden held back.
"The screams. Oh. What's happening?"
"A lot of bad stuff. You don't want to see it. I think you've seen enough already." Bertie, holding Eden up, glanced at Tom.
"We're okay," he said. "No telling for how long. Let's move."
"Where are you taking me?"
"To see your mother."
"Betts?" Eden said, her eyes wandering in confusion. But Bertie, who was bigger and much stronger at this point, succeeded in half carrying her toward the front of the house.
"Your real mother."
"You're lying. Where's Chauncey? I saw Chauncey get shot! Then she—Huh. She just ... got up, like it didn't happen. But it did happen!"
"Sounds like a neat trick. Tell us about it later. Tom?"
There was an explosion that shook the house, the black sky flushing orange. Debris peppered the roof. Sherard, holding the Holland and Holland rifle in one hand, pushed the screen door open and glanced outside. Thick oily smoke rolled past the house from the ocean side.
"One of the helicopters," Sherard said. "Let's get our girl to the SUV."
"I don't want to go!" Eden wailed.
"She's getting windy again." Bertie smiled gently at Eden. "You'll like us better when you get to know us." She let go of Eden with her right hand, propped her chin up gently with the left, and knocked her cold with a solid uppercut.
Sherard tossed his rifle to Bertie and gathered Eden up, throwing her over one shoulder, wincing as his game leg shuddered.
"Can you make it?" Bertie asked anxiously.
"What do you think I am, obsolete? And where the devil did you learn the haymaker?"
"Muhammad Ali taught my brother, and Kieti showed me. He never could knock me out when we traded punches, but I floored him twice."
"Follow me and shoot anything that looks the least bit unfriendly."
"You mean like that?" Bertie said as the gryphon with Chauncey's small neat head rose from concealment behind the Ford Expedition, unfurling a seven-foot spread of wings in the stifling murk around them.
"An excellent example. What is it?"
"Put her down," Chauncey said. "And I'll let you live."
"Body of a lion, wings of an eagle, the face of an angel," Bertie said admiringly. "A one-woman menagerie. I forgot to mention, you smell worse than jackal shit." Bertie shouldered the rifle and said to Tom, "Where do I shoot this whatcha-call-it?"
"I've changed my mind about letting you live," Chauncey said, and launched herself at Bertie with outflung claws.
Bertie fired the first of two rounds from the double-barreled hunting rifle, breaking a wing. The gryphon's flight plan was canceled and it smashed facedown into a flowerbed ten feet from where Bertie was standing. Glared at Bertie through a loose garland of uprooted red and white petunias.
"Oh, you bitch," Chauncey said, trying to move the smashed wing, digging up more of the garden with her lion's claws as she crept forward, gathering herself for a leap. "But you only have one bullet left."
"Eat it," Bertie said, firing again. The heavy bullet tore through Chauncey's small neat mouth and exited in a sprayed mash of hindbrain. The gryphon collapsed.
"Let's go!"
Sherard, limping badly, carried Eden the rest of the way to the SUV. Bertie sprinted past him, got in behind the wheel. The engine was running. As soon as Sherard had Eden tucked inside they took off.
"Nice shooting," he commended her when he'd caught his breath. "Too bad we can't
have it mounted; a gryphon would make a nice conversation piece at the old homestead." His hands were shaking. He looked back once, at the pall of smoke, and had a glimpse of creatures he couldn't identify gathering around the fallen gryphon. Lightning flashed over the bay as they drove around it. Rain beat down on the SUV. It was a dirt road, fast turning slippery, but they were in four-wheel drive.
"Will they come after us?" he asked Bertie.
"They probably stick close to home. We can only hope. What next?" Bertie asked, intent on her driving.
"Just put Moby Bay behind us. Do you know who or what they were?"
"Shape-shifters. Other than that, I'd have to get hold of one and delve into their genealogy. I'm not that interested. Tell me something. Is it normal to feel this horny after you've been in a bad scrape?"
Sherard laughed. "Is there any thought you're not willing to express?"
"To you, no."
"It's quite normal. First the adrenaline of fear, then the marvelous realization you haven't been killed. Then you want a smoke and a drink and above all you're driven by the survival instinct to—"
"Propagate the species. Yes."
"We're three now," Sherard reminded her.
"But Tom. I've waxed an old lady and a gryphon already today, my adrenaline is spouting through my ears, and—" she concluded in a querulous lisping voice, "Bertie wanth to get laid."
"We aren't out of this yet. Our priority is to locate a decent airport, lease a jet."
"Yes, sir." Bertie kept her eyes on the narrow empty road in the booming thunderstorm, sniffed a couple of times. Tears drained from her wide-open eyes. "I was just being smart-ass. Trying to keep my mind off ... certain things. Actually I'm exhausted and ready to scream."
"I know."
"And you keep making fists."
"I know."
"You shouldn't have given up tobacco. I don't really care, as long as you don't smoke in our house once ... we're ... married." She cried harder, loosing big gusty sobs in response to thunder above them and thunder in her heart. "If we live that long."
"We'll be okay. Maybe I should drive."
"I'm doing just fine, damn it!"
In the seat behind them Eden groaned softly, awakened by the rocking of the SUV on the twisty, unpaved road.
The mobile phone rang.
Sherard and Bertie glanced at each other. She wiped at one soggy eye, shuddered, and almost drove off the road.
"Shit!"
The phone continued to ring. Sherard rubbed his jaw, then shrugged and answered cryptically. He listened for a few moments.
"Yes. I know your voice. Yes. I understand." He glanced back at Eden. "We've bagged our limit on the license, and now we're on our way." Bertie looked worriedly at him. Sherard shook his head slightly, continued to listen. "I see. Very well. I'll want to confirm this, of course. Yes, there's a number I can call. Once I have verification you may expect us later tonight."
He put the digital phone back in its slot on the dashboard.
"Who was that?" Bertie asked.
"Senate Majority Leader Buck Hannafin. Forget about the airport. Looks as if we're staying in California. We'll head south, sticking to back roads for a while. When it's safe to do so we should stop. I have to find a pay phone to call Katharine."
CHAPTER 45
WASHINGTON, D.C. • MAY 28 • 10:42 P.M. EDT
"Interesting news," Rona Harvester said over the secure phone in her executive mansion study, which was decorated with Plains Indian artifacts and a painting of Rona mounted on the Appaloosa gelding Clint had given her for their fifth wedding anniversary. She had just returned from the Watergate hotel and hadn't kicked her shoes off yet. She had a fiery corn between two toes of her left foot. It had been giving her pure misery for the last hour and a half. "But what can we do with it?" she persisted.
"Probably nothing yet," Victor Wilding said cautiously.
"You gave me the impression we had Hyde by the balls."
"Only if some Air Force property was jeopardized today. Hyde committed serious breaches of procedure by grabbing those Conan stealth helos off their pads at Travis. They haven't been certified for active duty by the Pentagon. You know what those fucking helicopters cost; they'll be howling at High Command. But AG's on her third or fourth honeymoon with Hyde since he covered her ass before Judiciary on the Alfiero matter."
"Then it would be Clint's call, wouldn't it? I mean, of course, my call. And you know how I love squeezing big-time cojones."
"Careful, Rona. I'd like to be rid of him too, but he holds a lot of chits in this town. The Bureau's black files are as deep as our own."
Rona changed the subject but didn't abandon it. "So we know from the intercepted NSA satellite photos that Eden Waring is definitely in Moby Bay, California."
"Is, or was just a few hours ago. Positive ID. The Conans were last heard from en route to Moby Bay. They're long overdue back at Travis. According to the senior crew chief of the stealth wing, there were no provisions for a midflight refueling. The choppers would have been at bingo fuel no later than 1930 hours PDT. For the last couple of hours there's been a violent spring storm thrashing around that neck of the woods. No further coverage from the satellite has been received."
"What are the possibilities?"
"The helos are on the deck somewhere, sitting out the blow. Or else they got to Moby Bay, picked up the girl, made a run for it down the coast. An effective search can't be conducted before daybreak."
"I'm thinking about what happened to TRANSPAC 1850. I mean, what do we believe really happened?"
"According to the black box, something or someone was seriously fucking with the avionics. It seemed almost deliberate."
"Kelane Cheng. Her brain waves against a mere machine. No contest. What if Eden Waring has the power of Kelane? Aren't there psychics who can make it rain just by staring at some clouds?"
He didn't reply immediately. He was drinking something.
"Yes. A standard exercise in our training program."
"If Cheng could change the course of a DC-10, maybe Eden Waring could brew up a helluva storm to meet some incoming choppers. Maybe, nothing! I love this girl! I've got to meet her."
"She could be dead too, by now," he said, with a yawn that she took to be resignation.
"I don't think so. We're going to find her. Victor, if Bob Hyde is dead, c'est la guerre. But in case he pops up again, and empty-handed, I think we should have the ceremonial sword ready for him."
"Other than todaysh—day's—activities, the best thing we have on Hyde is that he likes an occasional golden shower from a teenager."
"And if a couple of dead stealth pilots turn up in the wreckage of those Conans?"
Wilding didn't answer immediately. Rona heard ice cubes chinking together in a glass as he swallowed.
"Then the Joint Chiefs will drag out the old rugged cross. Not even Allen Dunbar will be able to help Bob Hyde then."
"And Clint, I think, should do a brief TV appearance accepting with great sorrow the Director's resignation. How much time will you need to prepare that? Better make it a dark suit and subdued tie deal; you know, like for a funeral."
"Twenty-four hoursh"—he cleared his throat—"hours, give or take." Rona didn't miss the drag in his voice, the slurring.
"You don't sound too cheerful, lover." She was going to ask him what he was drinking, thought better of it.
"Tired is all."
"Damn, I wish we could be together tonight! But I've still got rows to hoe, probably won't catch more than twenty winks with Clint next door. I have to admit, having him back so close gives me the skin crawls. As if I'm about to be haunted."
"Not you. Nothing gets to you, Rona."
She didn't like that. Not that she felt insulted. It was the inference that he was down, way down, tonight. Focused on every waning heartbeat of Robin Sandza out there in Plenty Coups. Wilding himself was a young man in sound physical condition. All of his doctors agreed on that. But cases o
f otherwise healthy people dying from dread were documented in medical annals. No denying that Victor was, if not in a state of dread, sliding in that direction. Now what was she supposed to do? Any medication he took other than aspirin had debilitating side effects. The antidepressants unleashed extreme mania and violent paranoia, which during previous episodes had resulted in the purging of formerly trusted deputies at MORG. Right now Rona needed him stable and sane, strong in her purposes.
"Why don't you turn in, Victor? Tomorrow's a holiday, my schedule's light. We'll spend quality time together."
"Good. I'm going to read a little more, until I'm sleepy."
"What are you reading?" she asked carelessly.
"Revelation."
CHAPTER 46
BASKING ROCK AREA, CALIFORNIA • MAY 29-30 • 6:43 P.M. – 12:20 A.M. PDT
Geoff had flown sixty miles down the northern California coast from Moby Bay when problems with the Conan helo's avionics forced him down. A finger cove afforded the only level strip of beach he could locate along this wild stretch of shorqline. The shadowed beach was part sand, part rock. He underestimated the length of the combat helicopter. The shrouded tail rotor struck a large boulder just before touchdown, and the helo tipped violently to port. The body of the headless pilot, which had been draped over the right-hand cockpit seat, was flung against him. Sparks from the rotors striking the rocks showered in through the hole in the window beside him.
Geoff cut the ignition, but within a few seconds there was a haze of smoke in the cockpit. He heaved the body off him, unbuckled, and tried the radio. It didn't work. He hoped that the emergency beacon, reporting the helo's location, was operating, but much of the cockpit instrumentation was unfamiliar. A small miracle he'd made it this far.
Robert Hyde, strapped down in the cabin, was bleeding from an ear and appeared semiconscious. Geoff got him out of the helicopter, went back to look for a medical kit and survival gear.
The ocean was alight but, the cove, with steep forested walls on three sides, had begun to darken. The tide was coming in. He judged from the high pile of driftwood and flotsam at the end of the cove that almost all of the beach would be underwater at high tide.